Friday, March 27, 2015

"Scratch My Car and Die" aired on March 25, 1964, approximately midway through the five-year run of "The Dick Van Dyke Show," and by no means is it the best episode of the series.

And that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is EXACTLY my point!

Because even though it might not be the best, it's still pretty great. It's a perfect example of the kind of supreme sitcom splendor that "The Dick Van Dyke Show" pulled off on practically a weekly basis -- the kind of polished, well-written, perfectly performed, quietly revolutionary stuff that we can still watch and admire 50 (50!) years later.

In the event that you just emerged from a Maori encampment, here's the show's basic setup -- Rob Petrie (Dick Van Dyke) is head writer for "The Alan Brady Show," a New York-based TV variety series. He lives on Bonnie Meadow Road in New Rochelle, NY with wife Laura (Mary Tyler Moore) and son Ritchie (Larry Mathews) and he works with professional wisenheimers Sally Rogers (Rose Marie) and Buddy Sorrell (Morey Amsterdam) and priggish producer Mel Cooley (Richard Deacon).

"The Dick Van Dyke Show" was created and largely written by Carl Reiner, a longtime writer and performer with Sid Caesar on "Your Show of Shows" and "Caesar's Hour." Reiner took elements of the show from his own personal and

professional life -- he named Rob Petrie after his son Rob, and Laura Petrie was based on his wife, Estelle. He even included the street where he lived -- except in Reiner's case, it was Bonnie Meadow Road in Scarsdale, not New Rochelle.

Despite critical acclaim, "The Dick Van Dyke Show" wasn't an immediate hit; in fact, due to low ratings it was almost cancelled after one season. But executive producer Sheldon Leonard wangled new sponsor support and the show was moved from Tuesdays to a Wednesday night time slot immediately following TV's new number one show, "The Beverly Hillbillies," thus inheriting a massive audience. So the survival of the Petrie family was due largely to the ratings success of the Clampett family.

But "The Dick Van Dyke Show" had little in common with "The Beverly Hillbillies," or, for that matter, almost any other sitcom on TV in the early 1960s.

For one thing, it combined slapstick humor and witty dialogue with a skill that would be unequaled until "Frasier" came along in the mid-1990s. For another, the show was grounded in reality. Reiner's philosophy, and the advice he would give to other writers on the show, was simple: "Tell the truth." "The Dick Van Dyke Show" was life according to life, not life according to other sitcoms.

No wonder Rob and Laura slept in separate beds.

As a result, partly by happenstance and partly through intention, "The Dick Van Dyke Show" was as revolutionary as a sitcom could be for the time. Rob and Laura Petrie were a realistic married couple who were clearly attracted to each other even as they had the occasional argument -- and even though they slept in censor-mandated twin beds.

Laura dressed more like a realistic housewife than, say, June Cleaver -- Mary Tyler Moore's wardrobe choice of capri pants rather than a dress caused a mini-fashion stir at the time.

Also, the show's structure utilized dreams -- Rob's nightmare about aliens in "It May Look Like a Walnut," for example -- and flashbacks to Rob's Army days and his courtship and marriage to Laura.

Finally, by using African-Americans in "normal" roles as equals -- Godfrey Cambridge as a government agent, Greg Morris as Rob's Army buddy -- the show made subtle statements about racial equality in the midst of the civil rights era. (There's also, of course, the memorable flashback episode in which Rob was sure that the newborn Richie actually belonged to another couple, who turned out to be black (Morris again, as the husband).) And finally, Buddy Sorrell -- a central figure in the series -- was unmistakably Jewish. (There was even an episode about his belated bar mitzvah.)

On the set, 1963. Director Jerry Paris, who also played next-door
neighbor Jerry Helper, is wearing the cardigan sweater and tie.
(Photos are from Look magazine and posted on one of my favorite
sites, www.shorpy.com.)

Still, this was a situation comedy and not a documentary. So there were instances when Rob and Laura acted scatterbrained. But the behavior was always rooted in real reactive behavior -- they were never silly just for silliness' sake. And despite Laura's catchphrase of "Oh, Roooobb!," endlessly cited by people who don't know much about the show, the goofiness was distributed evenly between Rob and Laura, and "Scratch My Car and Die" offers a great example.

The episode was written by John Whedon, the grandfather of Joss Whedon, he of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "The Avengers." John Whedon's writing career dated to the 1940s radio series "The Great Gildersleeve," and he wrote quite a few episodes of "The Donna Reed Show." But "Scratch My Car and Die" gave him the chance to include more satire -- and more examples of honest behavior -- than an average Donna Reed script. The episode's director, Howard Morris, was also a performer with Reiner on "Your Show of Shows" and "Caesar's Hour" and also played Ernest T. Bass on "The Andy Griffith Show."

We open at the Petrie home, where Rob can't quit looking out the front door at his new car in the driveway. "Laura," he says, "will you look at that shaft of moonlight shining on our Tarantula?"

Rob: Do you know what the great thing about this car is?

Laura: That you can't bring it into the house.

Rob loves the styling -- even the ashtrays are teardrop-shaped -- the power and, most of all, the STATUS. He immediately calls next-door neighbor Jerry to brag about it, but Jerry can't come over. Rob is disappointed. "What's the sense of having a new car if you can't have your best friends envious of you?"

Then he gets even worse news from Laura -- she has to do carpool in the morning, and her car is in the shop, so she has to borrow the Tarantula. Rob is disconsolate -- he's bought a driving hat and everything:

Rob (to Ritchie): "This car is not the old station wagon. I don't want any candy wrappers or gum or lollipops on the seats
and I don't want any taffy or gunky stuff in the ashtrays. Rich, are you listening to me?"Laura: "Darling, if you want him to listen to you, you're going to have to take off the hat."

The next day, Laura drives the kids to school and stops at the market. She comes home and confides to her best friend Millie (Ann Morgan Guilbert) that while the car was parked, someone scratched it:

Millie: Front or back?

Laura: Yes!

Classic sitcom conflict, right? Yes, but the way it's handled demonstrates the genius of "The Dick Van Dyke Show."

Unlike many a sitcom wife, Laura doesn't tell Rob about the scratch -- she gets moral support from Millie: "Look, it wasn't your fault the car got scratched, right? But is Rob gonna believe that? No, he's gonna use it as an example against women drivers, and you'll be giving our whole wonderful sex a black eye."

Laura tries to persuade Rob to let her have the car for one more day for carpool -- actually, so she can get it fixed. But he sneaks out and drives the car to work. Now Laura is positive that she needs to tell Rob, but Millie holds tough: "Look, before you tell him the truth, give lying another chance, okay?"

At the office, Rob enters furious and frazzled. He can't even speak, which leads to a game of charades with Buddy, Sally and Mel:

Sally: Rob -- you gonna cry?

(Rob nods)

Mel: What's the matter?

Sally: Well, he's either got a toothache or somebody stepped on his Tarantula.

(Rob stamps desk affirmatively)

Rob thinks the scratch happened in the parking garage. He comes home furious and zooms off to see his attorney. Laura feels worse than ever. Rob returns home sheepish -- in his anger, he has run the car into a couple of concrete posts in his attorney's driveway.

So the situation that drives the comedy ends up being largely irrelevant, and the humor comes from recognizable behavior -- Rob's obsession with his new car. From his silly hat to his instructions to Laura -- "Don't park it under a tree. Or under a bird." -- Rob is the comic center of this episode. As I said, it isn't perfect -- there are a few jokes about women drivers that don't date very well. But there's so much that's good here -- and, again, on a consistent basis for more than 150 episodes, that's how they rolled at "The Dick Van Dyke Show."

Rob and Laura Petrie have been reunited on several shows, including the absolutely terrible 2004 special "The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited." Here they are on a 1979 episode of "The Mary Tyler Moore Hour" (which featured Michael Keaton as a regular):

Monday, January 19, 2015

Here are some words you will rarely, if ever, see in the same sentence:

"Kim Kardashian" and "talent."

"Downton Abbey" and "rowdy."

"Joan Crawford" and "lighthearted."

Yes,I like to pick onJoan Crawford. Hey, at least I'm straight up about it, ya feel me? It's just that she's always so ... so oxygen-suckingly earnest and yet phony-baloney, like a robot programmed to imitate actual human emotion. My favorite Crawford picture is "Mildred Pierce" because her melodramatic style fits the story so well. (When "The Carol Burnett Show" did a parody of that movie, the title pegged Crawford's style perfectly -- they called it "Mildred Fierce.")

Really?

And Crawford is at peak Crawford in her first full-length talkie, 1929's "Untamed."(She had earlier filmed a talkie number or two for MGM's "Hollywood Revue," but it was released afterwards.) In all fairness,"Untamed" would be terrible even if she wasn't in it -- it's a weird collision of embarrassing cultural assumptions and over-baked performances, sitting on top of a supremely uninteresting series of romantic complications that, like Crawford's grimaces, you can see coming from a mile away. (With dialogue by Willard Mack, bitchez!)

On the up side, Robert Montgomery isn't bad. (It is his first talkie as well.)

How to dance like no one is watching.

We open in the picturesque Valley of Zoro in South America or something, where lives a penniless Englishman and his daughter Alice, aka Bingo because ... she was conceived during a heated game? ("B-12! Oh, my God! B-12!")

Anyway, Bingo is the hit of the valley because of her spirited movements that approximate dance, and because she runs around in skimpy loincloths.

Accompanied by her pet monkey Chico, Bingo lives life as if it were a gay, mad game! She is as unspoiled as the jungle, as direct as a child, as graceful as a ... well, let's settle for two out of three.

Bingo's father is visited by two old friends, Murchison (Ernest Torrance) and Presley (Holmes Herbert). Father is then quickly stabbed, mostly so that Crawford can have a death to emote over; see for yourself, although I wouldn't blame you if you watched only a few seconds of this clip -- it seems to go on for hours.

So, it turns out that before Bingo's dad kicks off he tells his friends of a deed he has that's worth millions in oil rights. So if he's had that all along, why live in poverty?

Upon dad's death, Murchison and Presley swear to protect Bingo and her right to be rich, rich, rich, and they become her guardians. "The sweetest flowers grow in the mud," Murchison says in a non-creepy way about Bingo.

Then before you can say "Sydenham's chorea," we are on a ship bound for New York City. The oil rights have come through, or been established, or whatever it is you do with oil rights, and Bingo and her guardians are flush with cash. On board the ship, Bingo locks peepers with Andy (Montgomery), who's squiring an older rich woman, and it's B-12 all over again.

Since this is an early talkie, it's required that both Crawford and Montgomery sing, which they do in a nice untrained way. Their theme song is "That Wonderful Something," a ditty that's just made for plinking on the ukelele:

The scenes between Andy and Bingo, when they aren't weighed down with drama, are actually nicely played. But they also offer vivid illustrations of each actor's style. Montgomery is nonchalant -- it's almost as if he doesn't care if he's in the picture or not. Crawford, on the other hand, acts like she'd kill you if you cut even one of her lines.

At first, the devil-may-care Andy doesn't know what to make of Bingo's guileless love for him. But it doesn't take him long to respond in kind. However, Uncle Murchison has a problem -- Andy is without funds. (Which seems weird, considering that he's on an ocean liner and has access to more than one tuxedo.) So Murchison, in his lumbering style -- speed was not an Ernest Torrance specialty -- suggests that Andy and Bingo cool it until she's been in New York for a few months, and then behind the scenes he works to sabotage the relationship.

This leads to lots of breakups and makeups between Bingo and Andy, climaxing with Uncle Murchison offering Andy a bribe to leave. A fed-up Andy gets drunk and confronts Bingo, which triggers her Acting reflux -- er, reflex -- again:

All in all, 1929 was a big year for Joan Crawford -- in June she had married Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and he supported her as she prepared for her talkie debut by reading English poetry into a Dictaphone. Unfortunately, no one at the time seemed to think about dancing lessons.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Just got back from riding my horses across our vast Texas estate. We stopped for a water break at Dallas and then got as far as Amarillo before we turned back. Oh, and I savagely killed a rattlesnake with a whip. No wonder that whenever people refer to me, they say, "Call Her Savage"!

June 13, 1932

Dear Diary:

Did I mention I love horses? I love their smooth skin, their tight hindquarters, their bulging muscles, their sinewy legs ... and did I mention I also like boys? Oh, and also today my temper got the best of me again and I crashed a guitar over someone's head.

June 14, 1932

Dear Diary:

Father is mad at me again! All I did was bring a family of rabid possums into the house and interrupt some silly cotillion or something. Oh, and I forgot to put on underwear. The babies were so cute! The possums, I mean. But daddy was having none of it. He just gave me an angry look the way he always does, and said, "She's no daughter of mine!" And mother gave him a funny look and said, "You don't know how right you are!" Wonder what she means by that?

June 15, 1932

Dear Diary:

Well, now I'm in Chicago attending finishing school. I've been on my very best behavior, which means I have reduced my fighting to once a week. Oh, and I've met the most wonderful man! He looks just like that actor in the movies, Monroe Owsley. Except that in the movies Monroe Owsley always plays rotten cads, and this man seems great! I'm sure things will work out perfectly! P.S. I have learned enough in finishing school to know that you don't put an apostrophe in "kayos," silly Daily Express! P.P.S. I am wearing underwear more often.

June 16, 1932

Dear Diary:

I've found out that married life has its challenges, especially when your husband turns out to be a congenitally unfaithful sociopath whose brain is being eaten by syphilis. But nobody's perfect. Oh, and I am pregnant.

June 17, 1932

Dear Diary:

My baby is sick and my husband has deserted me, so in order to afford medicine I must walk the streets. I really don't have any other choice -- the only things I know how to do are ride horses and get into fights. So I went out and pretended to be very interested in a Bromo-Seltzer sign and one thing led to another. Oh, and while I was out my apartment building burned down.

June 18, 1932

Dear Diary:

You'll never believe this, but I'm wealthy again! My grandfather or whatever left me a lot of money, so I've been going out with very handsome men. I've learned to control my hot-blooded nature and I'm down to fighting only once a month. Or maybe twice. Oh, and under police orders I am allowed to eat off of only paper plates.

June 19, 1932

Dear Diary:

I have begun to seriously re-evaluate my relationships with men. What makes me such a savage around them? Why was I such a disappointment to my father? Why has my mother always had such an interest in Native American culture? What happened to those rabid possums? So many questions, diary, and so few mirrors!

June 20, 1932

Dear Diary:

What a crazy month! It's been as tempestuous as my very nature! But now I am home again in Texas because my mother has passed away. In her final words, she pointed to my father and said, "He's not your real -- " and that was it! I'll never figure out what she meant! But my lifelong friend Moonglow is here, and today we went together to the wooded glen where I have so many happy memories of whipping rattlesnakes to death. And there, diary, I asked Moonglow the question that has long been on my mind ...

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Of all the actors and actresses who appeared in 1930s movies, Elliott Nugent (1896-1980) was certainly one of them.

Actually, if Nugent's known at all today, it's probably more for his abilities as a director and writer than as an actor. He collaborated with longtime friend James Thurber (they were both from Ohio and attended OSU together) on "The Male Animal," a Broadway hit in 1940 that was turned into a 1942 film with Henry Fonda and Olivia de Havilland. (On Broadway, Nugent also starred, opposite a young Gene Tierney, and he directed the film version.)

Nugent also directed several above-average pre-code pictures, including "The Mouthpiece," "Life Begins" and "Three-Cornered Moon." And later in the 1930s and into the '40s he directed comedies with Harold Lloyd, Danny Kaye, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.

As an actor, Nugent was mostly at MGM. He played Marion Davies's fiancee in 1930's "Not So Dumb" and he played straight man opposite Lon Chaney and a gorilla in Chaney's only talkie, "The Unholy Three."

But Nugent's best performances onscreen tended to be in dryly comic roles, and the 1929 film "Wise Girls" offers a nice example. This is pretty much an all-Nugent show -- it's based on a play by Nugent and his father, actor J.C. Nugent, and it stars both of them. The staging is also attributed to them -- like a lot of early talkies it takes place largely on one set, with a static camera and lots of entrances and exits. Screen direction is by one E. Mason Hopper, who brings things to a deadly halt more than a few times.

"Wise Girls" starts with this title card:

In other words, this is low-key humor in the style of The New Yorker, designed to elicit smiles more than belly laughs.

"Wise Girls" is a domestic comedy set in the Bence household. Dad Bence (J.C. Nugent) is irascibly, Fred Mertzian, comic. He's driven to distraction by the escapades of his grown daughters, particularly the highly strung Kate (Norma Lee), who's determined to be an artiste in the worst way, and is succeeding.

Kate's dalliances with the muse have included a book called "Angie's Temptation," and based on her pretentious manner we can easily imagine how good it is. Nevertheless, a local attorney named Duke (Roland Young) loves Kate so much that he has published the book for her, but she doesn't know he's involved -- she thinks it was bought solely on its own merit. The book was less than a best seller -- in fact, a bunch of copies were dumped at the local YMCA, where one resident, Kempy (Elliott Nugent), read the book and fell in love with the author.

In the course of about ten minutes, Duke and Kate have a falling out over her ambitions and Kempy, a plumber, shows up at the Bence house to fix a leaky pipe. Younger sister Ruth (Marion Shilling) discovers Kempy's love for the book and all parties involved, and she makes sure to introduce Kempy and Kate. Kate is still smarting from Duke's rejection, so she's more than ready for a new admirer:

The sudden marriage of Kempy and Ruth gives dad lots of reasons to sputter, and the elder Nugent has the character type down to a T. He's put out that his daughter isn't marrying the wealthy Duke, and he's convinced that Kempy is out for his money:

It takes, frankly, much more time than it should to establish that Kate and Duke belong together and that sister Ruth loves Kempy, and vice versa. "Wise Girls" is one of those early talkies that can be a real slog, but every so often you stumble across a scene with some bright dialogue. Here's another nice example, between Kempy and Ruth, who, admittedly, says her lines as if she learned them phonetically:

All's well that ends well in "Wise Girls," but 1931's "The Last Flight" is decidedly more downbeat. It was one of Nugent's last acting assignments for a while, and truthfully he's a bit shoved off to the side, fourth-billed under Richard Barthelmess, David Manners and Johnny Mack Brown. The four of them are shell-shocked pilots trying to drink away their trauma in post-World War I Paris.

"The Last Flight" is written by John Monk Saunders, who knew this territory -- he also wrote "Wings" and "The Dawn Patrol." In real life he was a flight instructor, although during the war he never got out of Florida. "The Last Flight" is a slightly weird but interesting mix of "The Dawn Patrol" and ersatz Hemingway. The four fliers speak in somewhat self-conscious declarative sentences in between cocktails. But this a pre-code movie through and through, unapologetic about its viewpoint -- you can't even imagine a studio remaking something like this until the 1950s.

We first meet the men after Cary (Barthelmess) and Shep (Manners) have survived a serious plane crash. Cary's hands have been badly burned and Shep has a nervous tic in his eye that requires the wearing of really cool-looking smoked glasses.

The war is over, and they're being released from the hospital. Cary can't hold anything, but hey, no problem -- the doctor just tucks Cary's discharge papers into his armpit.

Then he watches philosophically as they walk away.

Doctor: Now they're out to face life -- and their whole training was in preparation for death. It's like dropping a fine Swiss watch on the pavement. ... They're spent bullets -- like projectiles, shaped for war and aimed at the enemy. Now they've fallen back to earth spent, cooled off, useless. ... What good are they?

OK, doc, I think we get it.

Brown and Nugent round out the quartet as, respectively, Bill, an ex-football star whose laces have loosened a bit and Francis, a skilled marksman with narcolepsy. The plot thickens when the men meet Nikki (Helen Chandler) in a Paris bar. She wasn't in the war, but she can still match them quirk for quirk -- she keeps turtles in her bathtub and often says her lines while staring into space.

When Nikki sees Cary having to use both hands to hold his martini she thoughtlessly laughs, and then just as thoughtlessly pities Cary. Shep and Bill have to set her straight:

Nikki straddles the line between being vulnerable and annoying, but the men take her under their collective wing. She's especially attracted to Cary. Oh -- and there's a tag along, a creepy American reporter named Frink (Walter Byron) whose designs on Nikki are less than honorable.

Anyway, the group continues its bar hopping and committing assorted hi-jinks -- like when big Bill tackles a horse to prove he was an All-American. Again, Nugent doesn't get much meat in this movie. But there is one brief, good example, set in (where else?) a bar:

Following a sweet scene in which Cary and Nikki visit Pere Lachaise and the graves of Abelard and Heloise (Nikki ends up naming her turtles after them), we're off to Lisbon. Once there, much drinking ensues, along with visits to the bull fights and then a shooting gallery. What can go wrong?

BEGIN SPOILER ALERT

A lot can go wrong, actually, including a final showdown between Frink and the boys. It happens at the shooting gallery, and, for the first time in the picture, it gives Nugent's character something to do:

END SPOILER ALERT

With that exit into the darkness, Nugent also disappeared from in front of the cameras for a while. But his directoral trail leads from pre-codes to 1939's "The Cat and the Canary," the first of several pictures with Bob Hope, also including "Never Say Die" and "My Favorite Brunette." Nugent also directed Harold Lloyd in "Professor Beware," Danny Kaye in "Up in Arms" and Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald in "Welcome, Stranger." And he directed the charming 1948 sleeper "My Girl Tisa" and the 1949 version of "The Great Gatsby" with Alan Ladd.

(One last point about "The Last Flight" -- just after the movie came out, Saunders turned the story into a Broadway musical, "Nikki," with his wife, Fay Wray, in the title role. It ran about a month. Playing Cary Lockwood was a young actor named Archie Leach who appropriated the character's name when he went to Hollywood shortly thereafter. But people told him Lockwood was too long a last name, so he chose Grant instead.)

Oh -- and since "My Favorite Brunette" is in the public domain, here it is:

Friday, December 26, 2014

Adela Rogers St. Johns's novel "A Free Soul" was filmed twice -- once in 1931, under its original title, and again in 1953 as "The Girl Who Had Everything." In both cases the female leads were played by MGM royalty -- Norma Shearer and Elizabeth Taylor, respectively.

The character they play is the impulsive, independent-minded daughter of a well-known defense attorney (Lionel Barrymore in the 1931 version and William Powell in 1953) who has an ill-considered affair with one of dad's clients, an underworld character (Clark Gable in 1931 and Fernando Lamas in 1953) whose outer hunkiness hides an inner ugliness.

As we've come to expect in these comparisons, the 1931 pre-code telling of this story has a bite, an edge and a blatant sexuality that the later version doesn't. For instance, Shearer's Jan Ashe gets so wrapped up in life with Gable's Ace Wilfong that she ends up keeping half her wardrobe at his place.

And Ace's criminal lifestyle is pretty clear for all to see -- on his first outing with Jan, they're serenaded by a machine gun:

(Hello, Roscoe Ates!)

The 1953 film is more muted in every way. Lamas's Victor Raimondi isn't a high-profile gangster accused of murder like Ace. By comparison, he's practically an insurance salesman. He runs a horse racing news service -- it's a legitimate business, but it's also heavily subscribed to by bookies, and so he ends up as a target of a congressional crime commission, where he's represented by Steven Latimer (Powell). There are vague hints of sleazy doings behind the curtain, but Victor stays cool and immaculately groomed, even when he's climbing out of a swimming pool.

Toward the end of the movie, both men reveal their true colors to the women who love lust after them, and, again, Gable takes the cake for nastiness:

It's weird, but Taylor and Lamas as a couple don't really generate that much heat, especially compared to Shearer and Gable. Maybe it's just the difference between Andre Previn's hormonal score and that dress Shearer is wearing, but compare these two bedroom scenes:

The biggest difference between the two movies, however, is the portrayal of the father, named Steven in both films. In the 1953 film, Steven Latimer has retired to Lexington, Kentucky to raise horses and has a little bit of trouble with the bottle. In the 1931 film, Steven Ashe is a world-class drunk, ostracized by his wealthy family and judged by just about everyone except loyal daughter Jan. Barrymore won an Oscar for his role, and it's perfect awards bait -- Ashe flails, falls into the gutter and then pulls himself out with Jan's help to deliver a dramatic summation in court that literally drains him of all remaining life.

The 1931 film also much more effectively dramatizes the similarities between father and daughter. In the movie's most effective scene, they both reluctantly make a pact to swear off the dangerous things they love too much -- alcohol for Steven and Ace for Jan. It's terrifying for both of them. Father and daughter go on a three-month camping trip and they successfully escape their demons, but as soon as the decision is made to go back home, Steven falls off the wagon.

The 1953 film handles the same scene almost laughably -- Steven takes Joan to the Smoky Mountains, servants in tow, to get Victor out of her system. He has nothing at stake. She throws a fit after four days and goes back to Victor. The end. Steven might drink a little, but in this movie -- Powell's last for MGM, by the way -- it's no more a problem than Nick Charles's love of cocktails.

Barrymore, of course, squeezes every drop of melodrama out of his character (you wonder if he got any pointers about alcoholic mannerisms from brother John), and in one scene where Ace asks Steven's permission to marry Jan, Barrymore summons all the mean drunk behavior at his disposal to pile-drive Ace into the ground:

"The Girl Who Had Everything" has a similar scene, but not nearly as nasty:

If the 1931 version of "A Free Soul" is influenced by gangsterism and prohibition, the 1953 version is informed by the Kefauver Commission, whose televised hearings on organized crime introduced America to such polished gangsters as Louis Costello and Mickey Cohen -- men who had much more in common with Victor Raimondi than they did with Ace Wilfong. They aren't nearly as colorful as the old school gangsters, and "The Girl Who Had Everything" isn't nearly as colorful as -- well, just about anything.

Once John is released from prison, he does what any loyal
friend would do. He smuggles guns to his pals inside by
hiding them in a barrel of cement -- THE SAME CEMENT BEING
USED TO EXPAND THE PRISON! Oh, the irony!

The new gang soon begins robbing banks with the vigor
of someone who is very vigorous.

Oh -- and Dillinger meets a young woman who will
soon play a significant role in his DOWNFALL.

But in the meantime, Hoosiers are in a state of terror
that will remain unequaled until the glory days of Bobby Knight!

Banks are being robbed all over Indiana, including
... El Segundo?

The fame makes Dillinger a worldwide celebrity,
but he starts to get a little unstable.

He takes up hobbies, including woodworking ...

... and model railroading.

Finally, he decides to rob a bank by using baby powder
and his gang decides it's time to move on to another
criminal mastermind.

But the girl stays in the picture. And she starts wondering
where she's going to get some money to buy Christmas presents.

She and Dillinger decide to forget their troubles and
go to a movie theatre IT DOES TOO LOOK LIKE A
MOVIE THEATRE SHUT UP

He is totally inconspicuous.

Then, outside the theatre, Dillinger makes his fatal
mistake. He weighs himself and pays for it with a slug.

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

There is so, so, so much to make fun of in the 1929 film "Say It with Songs"that it's tempting to just kick back and start taking shots.

I mean, come on -- you have Al Jolson in full "world's greatest entertainer" mode, hamminess in overdrive, shoving his mug into the camera in what seems like every single scene, including one where he singlehandedly saves his son's life and restores his speech through pure Mammy power.

You have scenes of suffocating parental pathos between Jolson and Davey Lee, who was a huge hit opposite Jolson in 1928's "The Singing Fool" as Jolson's otherwise nameless son, Sonny Boy, appearing here as Jolson's other otherwise nameless son, Little Pal.

Finally, our man ends up in stir, the world's saddest convict, cheering up the other inmates with a passive-aggressive little ditty called "Why Can't You?" that includes these lyrics:

Violets from tiny seedsFight their way up through the weedsViolets can do itWhy can't you?

So there's a lot to make fun of in "Say It with Songs." And yet -- stay with me here -- this movie is not totally absurd. It actually offers just the slightest taste of what would be the future at Warner Bros.: the urban-based, tough-talking, fast-moving dramas, like "The Public Enemy" and "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang," that the studio would be known for just a few years hence, all under the supervision of Darryl F. Zanuck, who gets top writing credit for "Say It with Songs."

Of course, it's a bug jump from Al Jolson to Paul Muni. (Adapts Jolson voice) But you can see the seeds -- the tiny seeds! Fighting their way up through the weeds! Mammy!

"Say It with Songs" is tailored to Jolson's, ah, unique style. Here he is Joe Lane, a singer on his way up at a radio station. The movie's first scene establishes the station's programming -- a combination of commercials, singers and health and beauty "experts":

But then there is Joe, who stands out like a sore thumb. He is on the way up, but he has his irresponsible side. This is demonstrated when he gets involved in a crap game at the radio station. This is further demonstrated when he promises his wife he'll meet her for a date and keeps her cooling her heels for two hours. She makes empty threats to leave him, but the love between Joe and Little Pal keeps her from pulling the trigger.

But soft! There is trouble behind the microphone. The station's unscrupulous manager (Kenneth Thomson, a cadonce again) is making moves on Joe's wife Katherine (Marian Nixon), the very mother of Little Pal!

Katherine tells Joe about the passes, and he knocks the station manager silly. Unfortunately, the guy falls and hits his head on a lamppost, and he ends up seriously killed. And before you can say (with apologies to Johnny Cash) "Jolson Prison Blues," Joe is in the jug.

Meanwhile, on the outside, Katherine has sent Little Pal off to boarding school and she goes back to work for a doctor who's always loved her. To spare her from society's wrath, Joe tells Katherine he wants a divorce, giving Jolson the opportunity to act noble and victimized at the same time.

Then Joe is released from prison, and "Say It with Songs" really gets maudlin. We'll spare you the details because you can watch it online but here's the scene where Little Pal recovers, no thanks to a network of doctors, but because of fatherly egotism -- I mean, love:

A couple of facts about "Say It with Songs": The songs were by the writing team of DeSylva, Brown and Henderson, who also wrote the megahit "Sonny Boy" for "The Singing Fool"; as part of his deal, Jolson's name was added as a songwriter, entitling him to a share of that sweet royalty money. This is in addition to the $500,000 he received from Warners. Also, contrary to Wikipedia and other sources, "Say It with Songs" wasn't a flop -- it grossed more than $2 million, which placed it in the rarefied company of other pre-code Warner hits like "Noah's Ark" and "42nd Street."